New Supports
The next thing in the list to be updated is the code for adding supports to the geometry. I didn’t know how many people were using them until recently so they had not received much attention. I spent some time redoing part of the code to make them applicable to any type of machine job- not just 2-side jobs. The support changes probably won’t take too long but it dovetails into some other changes I wanted to make to optimize the machining regions. I’m going to try adding a way to machine only the area covered by the model + the tool diameter- not just the bounding area but a free-form polygon that would be automatically calculated. This eliminates the need to define the frame dimensions for 2-side jobs. In theory this should not take that long but who knows.
I’ve also been looking at Solidworks lately so I tried a small UI change. I like it so it’ll probably stay. You’ll also see a new tree view on the left. It’s just dead text right now but I’m going to flesh that out more and see if I like it as a UI to let users see a complete view of the document.
Comments
3 Responses to “New Supports”
While your at it, you might as well throw in the ability to machine user defined “regions”
Would be great for small areas that need a smaller tool. Maybe just let the user specify two opposite corners of a rectangle? A circular region would be cool, too. Let the user specify a location and radius of the area to be machined. Just a thought.
Also, can we still rough the whole stock, but finish the model only. Otherwise you might be doing a lot of plunging during the roughing, or am I wrong here?
You’ve jumped ahead in my development plan. All of the current code will be extendable to user defined regions. Simple shapes will be easy easy and on a longer timeline I’d like to be able to import them from a DXF or a Rhino plugin.
In the short term Machine Geometry Only will be a global toolpath option. Longer term there will be ways to change this. In the mean time you’d have to run the toolpath dialog twice, one for roughing and one for finishing if you want one to machine the full stock and one to machine the geometry only.
-Robert